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[German version] I. General Literary communication is communication by means of texts - stabilized, coherent and substantial statements. These may be written or eventually put down in writing, but they may also remain oral ( Literacy). Since for earlier societies as a rule only written texts can be studied, the term ‘literature’ focusses on such sedimented media of literary communication. Nevertheless, particularly for ancient societies the mainly oral character of literary communication must be emp…

[German version] Rhetor in the Augustan period; came from Asia (Sen. Controv. 9,6,16). In the twenties BC, at the latest, he probably taught in Rome, more often in Greek than in Latin (Sen. Suas. 4,5). Amongst his outstanding students were  Papirius Fabianus (who later turned away again from F.'s style) and Ovid; close contact with the imperial house is shown by F.'s homage to Maecenas (through the frequent quoting of Vergil's verses, Sen. Suas. 3,5) and probably also by the fact that Seneca menti…

[German version] (ἡμερολόγιον; hēmerológion) is a text arranged according to the days of the year. The ancient spectrum of meaning ranges from  calendar (Plut. Caesar 59) to diary (Cosmas Indicopleustes, Topographia christiana PG 88,276A, 6th cent. AD) and is still used in the specialized Latin of the 19th cent. in this way. In modern scientific language hemerologion is used to describe two quite different objects. In Egyptology and the study of the Ancient Orient, hemerologion refers to lists with a divinatory (and as a corresponding frame of reference - cosmologic…

[German version] I. Ancient Orient In the Ancient Orient, Akkadian scribes acted as grammarians, adding Sumerian translations to Akkadian flective forms, or who provided abstract grammatical explanations for Sumerian syllables. Grammatical texts took the form of a two-columned list; there were no grammatical rules expressed in sentence form. In order to achieve congruence between the non-isomorphic languages of Sumeria and Akkadia, grammarians made up artificial Sumerian forms, neglected morpho-synta…

[German version] (ἐπίδειξις; epídeixis). One of the three   genera causarum . Aristotle determined the epideixis as the type of a speech that does not elicit the listener's judgement or decision, but simply places him into the role of spectator ( theōrós): the speech itself is what is being tested (Rh. 1358b). It is not a necessary, but a plausible consequence that the function of directing the attention towards the speech itself is supported by certain topics, that is, topics of praise or reprimand, thus giving preference to mimetic t…

[German version] Female critic of sexual moral hypocrisy in Juv. 2,36-65; if this is meant to be a historical person (thus [2]), she could be identical with the L. characterized as a rich widow in Mart. 2,32,5f. (also not definitely historical). Rüpke, Jörg (Erfurt) Bibliography 1 PIR2 L 113 2 S. Morton Braund, Juvenal. Satires Book 1, 1996, 129.

[German version] (παράπηγμα; parápēgma) in ancient usage describes a peg calendar, which permitted the tracking of calendar dates (e.g. the 'Fasti Guidizzolenses' for the whole year, InscrIt 13,2,234, but probably also weekday calendars) by the (usually daily) movement of pegs. This form of calendrical orientation by means of individual pegging was particularly interesting where it permitted keeping track of calendar systems which deviated from 'civil' calendars of the time, i.e. for phases of the …

Name of an old patrician family, which was said to have immigrated to Rome under King T. Tatius with V. [I 10] (Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 2,46). The name, derived from the old personal name Valesus/ Valerus, was originally Valesios (cf. V. [I 7]; CIL XII p. 298g: Valesies; Fest. 22; Varro, Rerum divinarum fr. 66 Cardauns [4; 5]); the censor App. Claudius [I 2] introduced the new spelling in 312 BC (cf. Dig. 1,2, 2,36). Because in Antiquity the name was derived (etymologically correctly) from valere, 'to be strong', it was considered to be a good omen ( boni ominis nomen, Cic. Div. 1,102; Cic. Sca…

Roman nomen gentile, recorded from the 2nd cent. BC onwards (AE 1997,283; Schulze, 160). [German version] [1] Recitator, 2nd cent. BC Roman recitator of the 2nd cent. BC, who recited the Annales of Ennius [1] to large crowds on particular days (Suet. Gramm. 2) and who was understood in later times as a grammarian. Obtaining a textual edition from the Anecdoton Parisinum (GL 7,534) by conjecture on the name is problematic. Rüpke, Jörg (Erfurt) Bibliography HLL 1, § 38. [German version] [2] Legate, fell in 53 BC Died in the Parthian War in 53 BC, when, as a legate of M. Licinius …

Chronological periodicity, typically 4-10 days, linked with particular public activities (religious, political, commercial), often in the form of market days ( nundinae ) [1]. [German version] I. Types Two different forms of 'week' were known in antiquity. (1) The type corresponding to the modern week, of fixed length and ignoring the monthly calendar, only took hold gradually, at first in the form of the seven-day week ( h ebdomas), based on the Sabbath and probably regular from the time of the Jewish exile (587-539 BC), and the eight-day week ( o gdoas) of the Romans ( nundinum), also d…

Cognomen in the family of the Valerii ( Valerius). The best-known bearers are Manius Valerius Maximus M. ( cos. 263 BC), a commander in the Second Punic War, Marcus Valerius M. Rufus ( cos. 53), a follower of Caesar and antiquarian, and Marcus Valerius M. Corvinus ( cos. suff. 31), a supporter of emperor Augustus, who promoted Tibullus and other contemporaneous poets. Elvers, Karl-Ludwig (Bochum) [German version] [1] Valerius M. Avienus Legatus senatus in c. AD 396/98, praef. praet. for Italia and Africa As a member of an old consular family (Rut. Nam. 1,271f.; Macr. Sat. 1,6,26), he became l…

[German version] [1] V. Cerialis Amicus of Pliny the Younger (Plin. Ep. 4,21). Eck, Werner (Cologne) [German version] [2] D. V. Fidus Senatorial cos. suff. in November/December AD 148, together with M. Calpurnius [II 16] Longus (AE 1996, 1384 = [1]); governor of the province of Syria Palaestina in 150 (PSI IX 1026 = [2]). Member of the Pontifices in 155 (CIL VI 2120). IGLS VI 2777 is probably his burial inscription [3]. Eck, Werner (Cologne) Bibliography 1 J. D'Arms, Memory, Money, and Status at Misenum: Three New Inscriptions from the Collegium of the Augustales, in: JRS 90, 2000, 126-144 2…

Name of a Roman plebeian family probably deriving from the Italic praenomen Pompo, tracing back, like the Aemilii, Calpurnii and Pinarii, to one of the sons of Numa Pompilius (Plut. Numa 21,2; cf. Nep. Att. 1,1). In the 3rd century BC the Mathones (cf. P. [I 7-9]) achieved consulship, but later the family was insignificant. The most prominent member was a friend of Cicero, T. P. [I 5] Atticus. I. Republican Period [German version] [I 1] P., Cn. People's tribune in 90 BC People's tribune in 90 BC, killed in the Civil War in 82; Cicero quite often heard him in his youth; his j…

I. Historical [German version] A. Youth and early career C. Iulius Caesar was born in 100 BC on the 13th of Quintilis (from 44 BC: Iulius/July); his mother was Aurelia, a daughter of L. Aurelius Cotta ( cos. 119 BC; [1. 327]). His father became praetor in 92 BC, and died 85 BC. Nothing is known of C.'s childhood and early youth. As it was the custom for the Roman aristocracy, C., too, presumably spent his first years in the care of his mother, followed between the ages of 7 and 15 by elementary schooling and grammatical tuition (G…

[German version] [1] P., C. Roman teacher of rhetoric and orator, 2nd cent. BC A Roman distinguished by his education (Lucil. 592-596 Marx; Cic. Fin. 1,7; Plin. HN pr. 7), who was believed by some contemporaries to have written the speech De sociis et nomine latino (against C. Sempronius Gracchus' policies concerning the allies) for C. Fannius [I 1] in 122 BC, a speech which far outshone Fannius' other speeches in terms of rhetoric (Cic. Brut. 99: 'from the Elders'). More likely one of the first teachers of rhetoric at Rome than a senator.…

Roman family name, frequently attested in inscriptions, also in the form Cavius [1. 76f.]; in the Republican period its bearers are still politically insignificant; also a Faliscan praenomen [2. 103]. I. Republican period [German version] [I 1] G., P. Crucified as a spy of Spartacus 72 BC from Compsa (Lower Italy), was captured and crucified in Sicily in 72 BC by C.  Verres as an alleged spy of the slave leader  Spartacus (Cic. Verr. 2,5,158-170). Elvers, Karl-Ludwig (Bochum) [German version] [I 2] G. Bassus Roman grammarian and antiquarian of the late Republic Roman grammarian and…

[German version] I. Greek Gastronomical poetry (GP) may be considered a special stream of the parodistic poetry that  Hegemon of Thasos turned into a genuine literary genre in the late 5th cent. BC: light, jesting poetry (though resulting from artistic dedication) sings the delights of the stomach and the table. The lost Δεῖπνον ( Deîpnon, ‘Feast’) of Hegemon was the description of a banquet ( anagraphḗ, Ath. 1,5a; s. also  symposium literature), as are the works of the same name by Numenius of Heraclia (3rd cent. BC, cf. SH 596) and Timachidas of Rhodes (2nd…

[German version] Modern name for the chronologically organized collection of  Caesar's own commentarii or those reporting on his wars. Bks. 1-7 (58-52 BC) and 8 (52/51) of the Bellum Gallicum (BG), 3 bks. On the Bellum civile (49/48; BC), Bellum Alexandrinum (48/47; BAl), Afric(an)um (47/46; BAfr), Hispaniense (45; ending mutilated; BHisp). The almost fully preserved collection already existed in the present form at the time of Suetonius (Suet. Iul. 56,1); Caesar's commentarii were handed down to the Middle Ages in this form only. Elucidation on the history of thei…

[German version] I. Old Testament A religious law in the sense of a legal system existing alongside profane law or even preceding it, cannot be reconstructed for the old Israel. At the centre of recent discussions is the question of the ‘theologizing’ or the ‘Jahvism’ of the law. This refers especially to the concept occurring in Exodus (Ex 20,1 ff.: Decalogue and book of the covenant) of a God  Jehova as a lawgiver who thus functionally occupies a domain which in the Old Orient was reserved for roya…

[German version] (etymology ‘nine days’), Roman name for the market days or markets taking place every eight days (i.e. every ninth day), and thus also forming a kind of public and private measure of time. Market (II.B.); Week Rüpke, Jörg (Erfurt)

[German version] A. The term Formed as an adjective from the Latin fās (‘divine right’; no etymological link with *fēs or *făs and their derivative terms fēriae, fēstus and fānum can be demonstrated [11. 134]), fastus in technical language is found only in association with dies, and in Rome then signifies those days on which certain public acts were held to be permitted. This concept gave a calendrical digest of such days ─ among which the dies fasti predominate ─ the name fasti. As regards both name and graphic form, the word displaced all other competing terms for  calenda…

Italian surname (Schulze, 355); according to Roman legend, Rome's war against Alba Longa under King Tullus Hostilius was decided through the fight between the triplet Curiatii brothers of Alba and the triplet Horatii brothers ( Horatius) of Rome, with the former being killed (Liv. 1,24f.; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 3,16-20). After the destruction of Alba, the family is said to have moved to Rome and to have been included among the Patricians (Liv. 1,30,2; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 3,29,7). The consul recorded in the fasti for 453 BC, member of the 1st collegium of the decemvirs for the d…

Roman family name, probably derived from Varus. Name-bearers first attested in the 1st cent. BC, but only in the Imperial period did they attain any prominence. Elvers, Karl-Ludwig (Bochum) I. Republican period [German version] [I 1] V. Cotyla, L. Aedile in 48, 47 or 44 BC (Cic. Phil. 13,26), emissary at Rome for M. Antonius [I 9] in 43, and his legate in Gallia transalpina (Cic. Phil. 5,5-7; 8,24-32; Plut. Antonius 18,8). Bartels, Jens (Bonn) [German version] [I 2] V. Rufus, L. Roman poet, c. 70-15 BC Renowned Roman poet (Hor. Ars P. 55) of the Augustan period (c. 70-15 BC). Wi…

Name of an old patrician family, probably connected with the name of the god  Jupiter [1. 281; 2. 729]. The gens was one of the so-called ‘Trojan families’, who were said to have moved from Alba Longa to Rome under king Tullus Hostilius [I 4] (see below). The Iulii were prominent in the 5th and 4th cents. BC. Their connection to the family branch of the Caesares, which rose to prominence from the 3rd cent. and whose outstanding member was the dictator  Caesar (with family tree), is unclear. Caesar's adoptive son,…

A. Basic Principles [German version] 1. Term Calendar developed its modern meaning in post-antiquity from the Latin word for ‘debt register’ (  Calendarium ). In the following, the term is taken as an element of  chronography within a culture which attempts to describe or regulate annual periodicities. Typically, a day represents the smallest unit of a calendar ( Clocks). Rüpke, Jörg (Erfurt) [German version] 2. Social Construction of Time Hunting and farming both demand a harmonization with seasonal variations ( Seasons), thus leading to annually repeated patte…

[German version] Continuous records (  acta ) in the nature of minutes, documenting the activities of official bodies and their agents (magistrates, collegia, city councils), but also perhaps commercial enterprises, i.e. large private households (Cic. Att. 7,3,7); but the term is not attested for actual balance sheets. The interests involved, and therefore the content (down to the private ‘notebook’, Cic. De or. 1,208), level of standardization and publication of records can vary greatly. Characteristic of the commentarius, as an individual record is that it is almost a…

Name of a plebeian family [1], perhaps from Cales, politically active from the 3rd cent. BC. I. Republican period [German version] [I 1] People's tribune in the mid-2nd cent. BC People's tribune (?) in the mid-2nd cent. BC, otherwise unknown author of a lex Fufia on the fixing of permissible days for public assemblies (usually mentioned together with the lex Aelia,  Aelius [I 1]). MRR 1,452f.; 3,3f. Elvers, Karl-Ludwig (Bochum) [German version] [I 2] F., L. Rom. orator in the 1st cent. BC Known as an orator in the 90s of the 1st cent. BC. Around 97 his speech in the prosecu…

[German version] A Latin textual genre attested by numerous mediaeval MSS. Lunaria provide compilations of prescriptions and prognoses for all the days of a lunar month. In content they follow ancient astrological rules (Cato Agr.; Verg. G.; Plin. HN), but the tradition can not be reconstructed without a discontinuity [2. 18]. They correspond to the selenodromia of Greek literature, which certainly do trace back to the ancient prognostica [3; 4]. In this form the lunaria can be classified into the (mostly astrologically based) hemerological calendars, which range from…

I. Introduction [German version] A. Definition of the concept 'Religion', the substantive for describing the religious, denotes a system of common practices, individual ideas about faith, codified norms and examples of theological exegesis whose validity is derived chiefly from an authoritative principle or being. For the academic study of religion, conversely, the word is a purely heuristic category in which those practices, ideas, norms and theological constructs are examined historically; however, the…

[German version] (ἐφημερίς; ephēmerís, pl. ephēmerídes). A diary for personal notes, as office or accounts journal. The common term for such notes is   hypomnḗma(ta) , Lat.   commentarii or   acta . Ephemeris is found as the title of literary works that have been passed down or used, i.a. for the ‘war journal’ of  Alexander [4] the Great used by the historian  Ptolemy I (FGrH 117) and the fictitious Ephemerìs toû Troikoû polémou, the Trojan War diary from the (fictitious)  Dictys Cretensis. Plutarch (Caes. 22) describes Caesar's commentarii as ephemeris; however, in the  Corpus Caesa…

Rüpke, Jörg (Erfurt) [German version] A. Traditions (CT) Of the many calendar systems of Greek and Roman Antiquity only the Jewish and the Julian Calendars survived in use beyond the late classical period. For many other systems, such as the Gaulish calendar, or that of Coligny, or the conventional lunisolar calendar of the Eastern Mediterranean, there are clear breaks in the tradition after the 4th cent. AD. The Julian Calendar, the system adopted by the Roman administration, was taken over by the Chri…

In early societies, largely based on family organizations, genealogy as a derivation of a person's descent in the form of a pedigree is often used as a means of legitimation and (pseudo-historical) memory, which was always also directed at publicity (genealogy from Greek γενεαλογεῖν; genealogeîn, ‘to talk about [one's] origin’). [German version] I. Near East and Egypt The purpose of lineage, transmitted in the form of a genealogy (generally patrilineal; exceptions in the case of Egyptian rulers), was to legitimate a claim to rulership, to tenure of a …

[German version] (Form of the name according to  CIL 11,5405, from Assisi). Roman elegiac and lyric poet of the late 1st cent. AD. He is known only from the letters of Pliny the Younger (Plinius [2] P. Caecilius Secundus, C. , Plin. Ep. 6,15,1; 9,22,1f.), who held him in great esteem as an elegiac and lyric poet and described him as an equestrian and descendant of the elegiac poet Propertius. His friendship with Pliny and with L. Iavolenus Priscus, the legal scholar and consul of AD 86, are indica…

[German version] A. General Αἱ χρονικαὶ, τὰ χρονικά; Hai chronikaì, tà chroniká, chronicon; Latin according to Isid. Orig. 5,37 series temporum. No antique or medieval description of the genre [1; 2]. Chronicles are written histories structured on a yearly basis. They vary from mere lists of dates to miniature narratives for individual years: it is then, as  annals -- retrospective in the Roman period, ongoing and contemporaneous in the Carolingian -- that they enter the realm of real  historiography. This progres…

('Age'). [German version] I. General Censorinus [4] takes up ancient theories on saeculum in ch. 17 of De die natali (AD 238) in the framework of chronographic remarks. His sources include Varro, who, according to Serv. Aen. 8,526, was the author of a text, De saeculis. Censorinus, DN 17,2, defined saeculum as 'the length of the longest possible human lifetime' ( spatium vitae humanae longissimum partu et morte definitum). Censorinus makes a clear distinction between Etruscan (17,5-6) and Roman traditions (17,7-15; Roman(or)um saeculum: 17,7): the ritual staging of the beginn…

[German version] Short, narrative form of  historiography and as such, distinct from the primarily non-narrative  chronicle. As detailed history, breviaria seek to entertain ( Velleius Paterculus), but instruction, leading to abbreviation as a didactic technique, is in the foreground: the target groups were above all the upwardly mobile classes that needed a means of educating themselves -- this explains the increase in that type of textual material in the 4th cent.; (rhetorical) education is often both the starti…

[German version] A. Term Feriale is the term used in the title of a Campanian inscription of AD 387, containing a list of seven annually celebrated rituals (InscrIt 13,2,283). From this text, known as the feriale Campanum, historians now apply this term to similar compilations within the Latin sphere: In contrast with actual calendars (  fasti ), ferialia do not list all of the days within a year, but only those associated with certain specific rituals. It makes sense to extend the academic application of the term feriale to include comparable written compilations in other culture…

Widespread Italic nomen gentile. I. Republican period [German version] [I 1] V., L. Roman equestrian from Picenum, c. 106-59 BC. In 89 BC, V. probably served on the staff of Cn. Pompeius [I 8] Strabo (ILS 8888; [1. 161 f.]) and subsequently enriched himself as a favourite of L. Cornelius [I 90] Sulla (Sall. Hist. 1,55,17). He later joined the conspiracy of Catilina (Q. Tullius Cic. commentariolum petitionis 10), but betrayed it to Cicero in 63 BC (Cass. Dio. 37,41; Oros. 6,6,7). In 62, it seems that opponents o…